Holocaust: The Vatican
comes up short when it doesn't accept a significant measure of
Christian responsibility.

by Pierre Sauvage

As a child survivor of the Holocaust who was sheltered by
Christians-indeed, by a community of Christians-I am astonished
by the long awaited document on the Holocaust issued on Monday by
the Vatican's Commission for Religious Relations With the Jews.

"We remember: A Reflection on the Shoah" is not
merely feeble or vague, as is being stated. For all its
politically correct references to "the unspeakable" and
to the "Shoah," the document strikes me as contrived,
heartless, and insincere. It hurts rather than heals.

In his accompanying letter, Pope John Paul II indicates that
the Church thus "encourages her sons and daughters to purify their hearts, through repentance of past errors and
infidelities." But you cannot repent for past errors if you
do not acknowledge them. You cannot encourage others to repent if
you do not set the example yourself.

By refusing to accept a significant measure of collective
responsibility, by merely condemning "selfishness" and
"hatred," the Church, once again, fails to provide
leadership. The repentance that consists in saying, "To the
extent that I did something wrong, I am sorry," is the
repentance of the non-repentant.

Christians and non-Christians, believers and non-believers, we
all live in the shadow of a great lesson: the truth will make you
free. The greatest reproach against Pope Pius XII is that he did
not speak out when humanity was at a moral crossroads. Why is the
Church still so tongue-tied in addressing this monumental
failure? Why is it again lagging behind some of its flock?

To be sure, National Socialism was indeed
"neo-pagan." But how is it that it
flourished-apparently without roots-in the very heart of
Christian Europe? Is it completely irrelevant to the Church that
the murderers were the children of Christians-if not Christians themselves?

Why were these advocates and practitioners of murder not
denied the sacraments? Why were they not told that mortal sins
were being committed? Is there any record of Hitler, that son of
Catholics and former choirboy, even being threatened with
excommunication?

There is simply no recognition of the central fact: the
Holocaust would not have been possible without the complicity of
most Christians and without the virulent tradition of
antisemitism that had long infested the very soul of Christianity.

When it comes to the crucial matter of the responsibility of
the Christian bystander, the Vatican document is at its most
disingenuous. After asserting that "many people" were
"altogether unaware of the 'final solution'"-the
growing truth is exactly the opposite, that we knew enough-the
document begrudgingly asks whether "Christians" (i.e.
Catholics, I presume) did all they could to help the persecuted
Jews. Its typically equivocal answer: "Many did, but others
did not."

I will not quibble as to whether the righteous Catholics were
"many" or few. There are no absolute standards for such
an evaluation; it is entirely a matter of perspective. But while
the document piously states that the righteous Christians
"must not be forgotten," the reality is that the
Vatican has done little to date to see that they are remembered.

There were indeed, "many" Catholics among the
righteous. Yet, although Pope John Paul II has already elevated
more people toward sainthood than all of his predecessors in this
century, only a handful of these possible saints have been
righteous Christians of the Holocaust. How is it that there have
been so very few possible saints among the "many"
priests and nuns and lay Catholics who bore Christian witness at
a time of mass apostasy?

I know what was possible. Where I was lucky to be born, the
sturdy people of the area of Le Chambon, France, rooted in their
history and their faith, extended a dangerous hospitality to all
the Jews who made their way to this unique corner of the world.
Although Le Chambon was an old Huguenot community, the Catholic
minority there joined actively in the rescue effort.

However challenging my response may be to Christians, I am a
Jew who will never forget that he survived the worst of what
Christians allowed to happen because of the best of which
Christians are capable. May future Christian teachings on the
Holocaust meaningfully reflect both those aspects of the
Christian experience.

Pierre Sauvage produced the 1989 documentary Weapons
of the Spirit, which tells the story of Le Chambon. This
article is excerpted from Sauvage's contribution to
"Holocaust Scholars Write to the Vatican,"
published by Greenwood Press.